Cleveland Student-Assignment Plan Focus on Reform, Race Balance

The Cleveland board of education is expected this week to consider
whether to drastically scale back the school district's 17-year-old
mandatory-desegregation program in favor of a voluntary system that its
supporters say is geared more toward improving educational quality.

The plan, named "Vision 21,'' was released May 1 at a citywide
education forum. District officials said it is the product of six
months of work by some 400 educators, parents, and community
leaders.

In addition to the change in the district's student-assignment
policy, which has been at the center of controversy since 1976, the
plan also calls for changes in curriculum and other school operations
to improve education for all students, especially minorities. About
17,000 of the district's 73,863 students--roughly one in four--are
bused for desegregation purposes.

School officials discussed the plan last week with the Cleveland
branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, which represents the plaintiffs in the district's long-running
desegregation case.

"The concepts were good, but, until we have some data on
implementation, it is difficult to say that this is something we could
approve of and something that would be good for our kids,'' said
Pauline H. Tarver, the director of the N.A.A.C.P. branch.

The plaintiffs must approve the plan before it can take effect, as
must U.S. District Judge Frank J. Battisti, who oversees the case. In
March 1992, the judge said he was open to an alternative to busing for
racial balance provided that the substitute is constitutional and
improves educational quality. (See Education Week, March 25, 1992.)

The plan has received generally positive reviews from key players in
Cleveland school governance.

Carol S. Gibson, the executive director of the Cleveland Initiative
for Education, a consortium of business and civic groups, said the plan
is "just spectacular'' and "a good statement about how far this city
has come.''

Christopher M. Carmody, a special assistant for education to Mayor
Michael R. White, said Vision 21 is the the city's first comprehensive
school-reform plan in two decades and "one of the only
student-assignment proposals in the country which is driven by
educational concerns rather than by logistical or other concerns.''

Richard A. DeColibus, the president of the 5,200-member Cleveland
Teachers Union, said his union was "solidly behind'' most of the plan,
which he called "educationally sound.'' Still, he questioned how the
plan would be funded and objected to the proposed location of some
magnet schools.

4 Attendance Regions

Asserting that the Cleveland system now has only a few excellent
schools and programs, the superintendent, Sammie Campbell Parrish, said
the plan would create "an entire system of schools that routinely works
and works well for all students.''

The plan would divide the district into four student-attendance
regions. Magnet schools open to students from across the district would
be created to promote voluntary integration.

Elementary schools not made into magnets would become "community
model schools'' offering children in their attendance regions programs
based on trends in school reform.

Ms. Parrish confirmed that up to seven of the district's 127 schools
could become racially identifiable as black under the plan.

She said the parents of children assigned to these schools would be
allowed to transfer them to another that more closely mirrors the
district's 70 percent black enrollment, even if the change would
exacerbate racial isolation at the schools losing the students.

At the high school level, the plan proposes eliminating the general
track and requiring all students to prepare for either a four-year
college, a two-year associate-degree program, or a licensed
apprenticeship program.

It also calls for the hiring of more guidance counselors, infusing
Afrocentric and multicultural education into the curriculum, and
upgrading professional development for teachers and
principals.

Vol. 12, Issue 33

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